Redemption
by mlast
Summary: Over in the darkness, the figure sits. His posture is slovenly, his shoulders hunched. He would give anything to start over again. He is praying for redemption. Mild drug references, ENDING SPOILER.


**Author's Notes:** Heavy Rain/Norman Jayden are owned by Quantic Dreams.  
There are mild references to drugs in this story.

This is the first fanfiction, the first story, I have written in about 6 years. I'm still a little rusty. But I hope you enjoy it.

* * *

**Redemption**

Over in the darkness, the figure sits. His posture is slovenly, his shoulders hunched. Yet if you look closely, you can see movement there. He is sat next to a black object, a black object with white keys, the only light to be seen. It bounces around the room and yet reflects nothing. Silence.

Tentatively, the figure raises a trembling hand and presses a finger down on one of the keys. A sound hangs in the air, as fragile as his stance, vibrating like his breath. Slowly, he touches another. And another. Notes tumble against each other like cars in a pileup. Yet the sound that emanates from them is beautiful.

Upon touching the keys, something seems to illuminate the figure from within. We can see him a little more clearly now. His shoulders still hunched, clothes the colour of granite. A suit. Smart, impeccable. The brown shoes, once polished, now caked in mud. Something has happened in his life. The mud hides the story, revealing nothing.

His hair is neat, yet ruffled at the same time. Dark brown, chocolate notes. His face looks worn, older than his years. The face agrees with the mud on his shoes. Something has happened to him. Traces of stubble just visible in the shadows, and a small scar on the right cheek. He seems so defeated, the posture still lowered, awkward, yet something about him reveals he was once a proud man, a strong man, a man with a future.

We cannot see his eyes. They are hidden by a pair of black sunglasses. Though still to be seen are the dark circles around the eyes, spread like a virus around the glasses. The glasses… there is something strange about them. A strange blue glow reverberates underneath them, bathing the shadows around the figure's eyes into stronger relief, pronouncing his past more, revealing more about his secrets. The word "ARI" can be read along the side of the frame on one side. We assume this is a designer brand. Why is he wearing them in such a dark place?

He is still playing, pressing the notes almost playfully as he picks up speed. He knows what he is doing. Again and again, his fingers collide with the ivory. Now he uses both hands and we notice he is wearing a black glove on the right one. Why is this?

Almost frenzied now, he becomes animated, the shape of his body contorting into a slender line as he rises like a phoenix from the flame for the crescendo. Hands become blurred and we can't tell what is real and what is fantasy any more. Or can we?

Here we are, in a room that doesn't exist. The piano, which is merely an illusion. The shadows telling lies. We realise it now. Have we been dreaming it all along? And what of the figure? The man playing this piece of fiction so beautifully, so gracefully? Is he a lie too? Or is it something different?

The glasses he wears are real enough. They seem to project the world he is in from their black holes, sucking everything that is true and real out of existence. All that is real now is here. This moment.

The figure is real enough. Nothing could make up such a vision. This is the place he feels most at home. Where nothing can touch him and he can escape from the horrors of his past. He can crawl into his warm corner and relive the times when he was a hero, when he was loved, when everything went right for him. But nothing does any more. He continues playing the piano, but the thoughts of horror are bleeding into his mind like ink on paper, seeping into his bones, paralyzing his heart…

He cannot escape. He involuntary recalls the story, and we can hear it in the echoes of the tune he plays. The melancholy in the air. Suddenly, we know everything and nothing about this man sat in an invisible world.

It was two weeks ago when the body of a small boy was found in a warehouse by the docks. His body had been soaked, saturated. Rainwater had sapped his life away. The guilt had been too much for this man with the sunglasses. It had been his job, his responsibility, to make sure the boy was found safe. And he had failed.

His failure led him to dark nights where he spiralled out of control, blind drunk and high on drugs. He wanted to become so numb that he couldn't feel alive any more. He had no purpose in life. The only way to become free of the burden was to put those glasses on. He could escape to a world where nothing mattered, where he was still a hero. Where the boy – Shaun Mars – was still alive.

As if on cue, the room with the piano flickers. He is still playing manically, the notes clashing in the air, fighting for position. He looks down. The piano has vanished. He is playing thin air.

He looks up again. There is now sunlight on his pale skin, though there is no heat. He is standing on a street full of smiling people, happy, not part of his world. As he looks on, he sees a very familiar figure standing in front of him, some distance away. But he can make out the boy's features. It is Shaun Mars.

The man's mouth opens. This is his chance to get it right, to make it good. He can still save the boy. Delirious, high on hope, he sprints towards Shaun Mars, as if running on air, he floats, he shimmers. Though he has stopped tapping the keys, the piano faded away, the music still plays on.

And he reaches Shaun Mars, his hands extended, mouth open as if to speak. He is speechless. The boy's expression has not changed since he began running towards him, nor his stance. He still smiles at the man, plastic and fixed to his face. The man reaches out for Shaun. He touches thin air.

The sun disappears as if a switch had been pressed. Suddenly there is darkness and danger and there is nothing he can do any more, the boy, Shaun Mars, is gone, has died, will never come back –

The piano room swims into focus again. The man slumps to his knees, then his whole body collapses into a heap on the floor. He curls up, shaking, the composition he had been playing previously still echoing in his head. He can't escape.

Slowly, his hand shaking, he reaches up to his head. Places the trembling hand to his glasses. Takes them off.

There is nothing any more. Nothing but a dark hotel room and a dark figure slumped in a coil at the foot of a dark bed. Dark, staring eyes, eyes the colour of ice. Eyes that see nothing but the image of that boy's body, dead, gone, finished.

Nothing but the shaking body of Norman Jayden, surrounded by a large number of small glass phials, one or two of them containing a bright blue powder, the rest empty.

And as he sobs, as the blood drips from his nose, he realises that he can't go back, he can't start over, that this is the best it's ever going to be.

_fin_


End file.
